ABOUT

The Centre for Environmental Rights (CER) are activist lawyers who defend the right of communities and civil society organisations to an environment not harmful to health or wellbeing for present and future generations. Through litigation, advocacy and activist support and training, they seek to advance their vision of a more equal society, free of fossil fuels, in which environmental and climate justice is realised and all people and the planet flourish. The report traces the trajectory of CER from its modest beginnings as a new non-profit law clinic to a respected public interest law organisation with a diverse team of over 40 lawyers and activists who work on environmental rights and justice issues across South Africa. CER’s work covers climate change, mining, pollution, corporate accountability and transparency, and activist support and training.
“Over the last two years CER has taken the opportunity to pause, reflect on our growth and carefully consider our strategy for the future. Our impact report showcases the power of working with communities to fight for environmental justice and advance human rights and the realisation of our Section24 Constitutional right,” says incoming Executive Director Wandisa Phama.

The Ethical Agency (TEA) started working with CER in 2022 and identified that work was required to help redefine a brand language for greater impact within a data overloaded social and digital context. Whilst TEA was able to inject a more expressive visual style into a few smaller projects in 2022, it was the Impact Report where we were able to articulate a visual language vision for how the brand style and visual communications can evolve for the future.

Our role as publication designers is to create authentic content whereby the viewer is engaged to want to find out more, and continue reading. Especially in a long form document with large volumes of text, the less the reader is aware of the "design", the more we have achieved in delivering on our remit. We feel that our design has helped to narrate the story of the organisation in an engaging, user friendly and authentic fashion.